2007: The Year of Watching DVDs, Part 36: The Last One

I started watching the IMDb top 250 list and when I finished that, I watched everything else. All 2007's reviews.

An American In Paris (1951): I'm sure it's a wonderful movie but it almost made me puke on a number of occasions. Like when sex terrorist Gene Kelly sings with some children. Gene Kelly. He's a professional monster pig, isn't he? He plays an artist. Film guest stars aunt Harriet from the Batman TV series! Plus it wasn't even filmed in Paris!! Moral: Anything goes when you can dance.

Stagecoach (1939): Seemingly endless western by John Ford (his first talkie). It's about a stagecoach. 18 minutes in, SUPERBLOG!! Mortal Enemy John Wayne enters, playing "Ringo the Kid" or "The Ringo Kid" or "Kid Ringo Teh" or somesuch. His distinguishing characteristic in this movie is that he is polite to a whore. But it later turns out that his politeness stems not from the goodness of his heart but rather a desire to "marry" her. Moral: John Wayne liked to fuck prostitutes.

Rebel Without a Cause (1955): This movie stars that guy the pop group Troll sang about. They were from the town I live in. Ends with lots of dramatic music and running. And a stupid whiny cry-baby with a gun. Moral: Watch out for the police.

Hard Eight (1996) (repeat): AKA Sydney. Here's what I found when I image googled the title. Moral: Don't kill people.

Chancer, Series 1 (1990) (TV series, 13 episodes) (repeat): I liked this when it aired on SVT when I was a kid. It's grey and dull and very English and very late 80s. Now it remind me a little of the short-lived Profit (reviewed in Part 22), but perhaps a tiny bit smarter and with more believable characters (though maybe that's just because Americans always seem fake, even when they're real. (Just kidding! (But not really.))). Hey - Jim Profit (Adrian Pasdar) and Stephen Crane (Clive Owen) even look alike:

Moral: Several. Money isn't everything. It's OK to reinvent yourself but sometimes it's good to be honest. Derek is a stupid name.

Wuthering Heights (1939): Laurence Olivier as a bad-tempered, childish loser who turns bitter when he can't have the woman he loves. Quite good. Moral: Don't turn bitter.

A Place in the Sun (1951): Montgomery Clift knocks up Poor Plain Shelley Winters, then cheats on her with Rich Teenage Elizabeth Taylor. Moral: Don't do stuff like that.

Mutiny on the Bounty (1935): Charles Laughton is Captain William "Hardcore" Bligh. Moral: When you mutiny, kill everybody.


The Astronaut Farmer (2006): Billy Bob Thornton as a would-be astronaut named Charles Farmer. Moral: Follow your dream.

The Badge (2002): Billy Bob Thornton as a small town sheriff named Darl Hardwick. Moral: Chicks with dicks are people too.

Straightheads (2007): AKA Closure. Gillian Anderson and boytoy are attacked! Moral: Don't call people wankers.

The Public Enemy (1931): "Nails" Nathan and his posse wreak havoc in Chicago. Moral: Crime doesn't pay.

South Park: Bigger Longer & Uncut (1999) (repeat): When the blood of innocent Canadians is spilled, Satan and Saddam try to take over the world. Moral: Censorship is bad.

Identity (2003) (repeat): John Cusack is a multi-talented limo driver who investigates a crime. Moral: Madmen sure can be crazy.

My Fair Lady (1964): Mad Henry Higgins and Colonel Hugh Pickering engage in a bet on who can be the most homosexual. Also, on whether Eliza Doolittle can ever learn to speak properly. Moral: Opposites attract.

To Die For (1995) (repeat): Nicole Kidman wants to be in television. Moral: Everyone gets their fifteen minutes eventually.


Four Rooms (1995) (repeat): Tim Roth as a bellboy in four stories of remarkably varying quality (half of it is good or very good, half of it sucks elephant balls). My most special New Year's Eve film. Moral: Kids will be kids.

And so our long, arduous journey draws to a close. All in all, I watched and reviewed circa 512 movies and 632 television episodes. Thanks for reading. Good night.

The Year of Watching DVDs, Part 35: Probably the Second to Last One

I watched the entire IMDb top 250 list and now I'm watching everything else. All reviews so far.

******

What I've seen recently, listed in order of descending goodity:



Doubleplusgood
Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984)

Very Good
Blade Runner: The Final Cut (1982/2007): AKA the "25th Anniversary Edition". Best version yet, I guess.
The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989): Greenaway tastiness.

John from Cincinnati (2007) (TV series, 10 episodes): David Milch's post-Deadwood project, similarly cancelled - presumably because it was good. HBO hates Good nowadays. Fine actors, excellent dialogue, interesting storyline.

******

Good Plus
Gosford Park (2001) (repeat)
Thank You For Smoking (2005)

Good
30 Rock, Season 1 (2006) (TV series, 21 episodes)
Dexter, Season 2 (TV series, 12 episodes)
Hemsöborna (1966) (TV series, 3 episodes): Largely faithful but slightly sanitized adaptation of the classic Strindberg book.
Lonesome Jim (2005)
Lord of Illusions (1995)
Mad Love (1935)

A Scanner Darkly (2006): Definitely the most faithful film adaptation of a Philip K Dick story. (I dissed a bunch of the others in Part 30.) Here's something amazing (in a bad way): The theatrical trailer (included on the DVD) doesn't even mention drugs. Apparently, they tried to sell this movie as something entirely different than what it is.
Vanilla Sky (2001) (repeat): What we learn: Never fuck a girl more than three times in one sitting. Because if you do, you're legally married. See also.

******


Strong Okay
Corpse Bride (2005): Nice to look at and listen to, but the story is weak.
Road to Perdition (2002): Changing the name of historical person John Looney to "John Rooney" (and Michael O'Sullivan to Michael Sullivan, for that matter) seems typically Hollywood. And the comic it's based has stuff artwork. STIFF I tell you! That darn Piers Rayner. I remember liking him okay when he was on Hellblazer, though.

The Secret Of Nimh (1982) (repeat): The book this is based on was one of my favorites when I was a child (Should I reread it? Or will it only disappoint?) and I also liked the film a lot, even though it excises most of my favorite parts from the novel and adds some magical claptrap. When I was a kid I assumed that Jeremy the Crow wanted to f**k Mrs Brisby and I still think there might be some attraction between them, but their love is of course impossible. MILF alert: Mrs Brisby appears entirely nude in one scene!

Okay
Cannibal! The Musical AKA Alferd Packer: The Musical (1996): The Parker/Stone thingie. A bit disappointing, but the snowman number is great:

Dinosaurs, Season 1 (1991) (TV series, 5 episodes) (repeat)

God, I'm getting SO bored with writing these stupid "reviews". I'll be glad when the year is over.

The Year of Watching DVDs, Part 34: Schle Collection + Related

I watched the entire IMDb top 250 list and now I'm watching everything else. All reviews so far.

Hello and welcome to another installment of this insanely popular SUPERBLOG!! feature. This time, it's all about a limited distribution DVD collection I got my hands on, called The Schle Collection. It contains a variety of movies, most of them fairly mediocre (none of them get more than 3 Keatons). But they were still a pleasure to watch! Also, some of the DVDs directly led the way to other movies I wanted to see, which I'll list here, even though they're not part of the Collection proper.

* * * * * * *

Good Plus
Blood Diamond (2006) (repeat): Previously reviewed in Part 17/18.
Kunglig toilette (1986) & Potatishandlaren (1996) (repeat)
Whale Rider (2002): Actress was also in SW3, see bottom of the list.

Good

Blood Work (2002): Eastwood in an oldskool detective story with an 00s sensibility. A tad too many touches of sentimentality and I guess it's pretty implausible, but it's just so NICE. Completely laid back, and most of it takes place in daylight.
Children of Men (2006) (repeat): Previously reviewed in Part 10.
Chocolat (2000) (repeat)
Honogurai mizu no soko kara / Dark Water (2002)
Leende guldbruna ögon (2007) (mini series, 3 episodes)
New Nightmare (1994): Fifty percent Elm Street, fifty percent Scream.
A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) (repeat)
A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987): Either the best or the second-best Elm Street.
Ocean's Eleven (2001)
Ocean's Thirteen (2007): Completely ridiculous, but great fun.
This Is England (2006): About a tiny little skinhead. Nicely realized, if surprisingly lightweight.

* * * * * * *

Strong Okay
Babel (2006): I liked it, but I also hated in a little bit. Here are some selections from 1000 thing that i learned watching 'Babel':

30. When a Mexican nanny learns that her charges' mother has been shot, is going into surgery, and may be near death, she will immediately take those children out of the country and render them incommunicado for the next 24 hours, thereby ensuring that (at the very least) she will lose her job.
31. When a tour group of Westerners sees one of their group shot and in life-threatening circumstances, no member of the group will show any regard whatsoever for the well-being of the victim. They will instead leave her to die, citing vague fears about the surroundings and the need to take their medicine.
32. When Morrocan police investigating a shooting encounter persons of interest who try to flee, they will open fire with intent to kill and continue to fire even after the suspects are pinned down, ensuring they will never discover the perpetrator. However, when they eventually get some return fire from a 13-year-old novice shooter, the Morrocan police will cease fire, cower behind cars, and wait for the suspects to surrender.
33. In Morroco, only ambulances can take injured people to hospitals. For some reason, tour buses, police SUVs, and cars will not work.
46) cells phones are just a myth, nobody uses them, actually.
57) don't give marrocans stuff, they WILL sell them
82. When you can't travel 4 hours to a hospital, travel 1 hour to the nearest underdeveloped village and wait there for 10.
92.It's tough to be deprived of hearing, more so than you'd think.

The Hunted (2003)
Wimbledon (2004)

Okay
Assault on Precinct 13 (2005)

Beerfest (2006) (repeat): Reviewed in Part 15.
Bullitt (1968): I don't think I get it.
Captain Corelli's Mandolin (2001)
Coach Carter (2005): I gave it an entire blog post in Part 32!
Cold Mountain (2003)
Dances with Wolves (1990)
The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005): Starring Dexter's sister.
Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981): Pretty much the perfect encapsulation of so many slasher movie clichés. bathing naked in the middle of the night, "I'll be right back", and so on. And you just know that the guy in the wheelchair has to buy it, cos Jason is an equal opportunity killer.
Inspector Morse: The Death of the Self (1992) (TV movie)
Jackass: The Movie (2002)
Lucky Number Slevin (2006): Reasonably entertaining, but annoyingly "clever". The dialogue brings to mind Moonlighting (you know, were everything was said three times). On the plus side, I did learn the word ataraxia.
Ocean's Eleven (1960)
Ocean's Twelve (2004): I dislike Julia Roberts playing herself and all the "coincidences" (Catherine Zeta Jones just happens to be the oops that would be a spoiler).
One Hour Photo (2002)
Prime Suspect 4: Inner Circles (1995) (TV movie)
Secret Window (2004): Slow and less than engaging Stephen King adaptation. It's a little unusual to see an actor of Johnny Depp's caliber do something this bland.
Shall We Dance (2004)
Sweet Home Alabama (2002): Likable romantic comedy. The ending is a foregone conclusion.
Tears of the Sun (2003)

Weak Okay
Firewall (2006)
Gothika (2003): Partly effective thriller that falls apart completely in the last act.

It (1990) (miniseries, 2 episodes): Oh, that fucking clown. Interesting: Image Google for [stephen king it] and you get a suggestion to try [pennywise].

The Passion of the Christ (2004) (repeat): An insane man is brutally tortured for 90 minutes. Is that supposed to be edifying in some way? Competently made, but sick and disgusting. I recommend South Park's "The Passion of the Jew" as a companion piece.

* * * * * * *

Bad
Eight Crazy Nights (2002): Sucky animated feature with Adam Sandler.
Freddy vs. Jason (2003): A very good review.
Friday the 13th (1980): This one too.
A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge (1985): It's not much of a revenge when it's different people he's harassing, is it? It's good that instead of going the Friday way and just repeating the same plot, they tried for a different approach. It's bad that it's not good.
Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005): I like the way General Grievous (see picture at the top) looks and moves. That's about it.

The Year of Watching DVDs, Part 33

I watched the entire IMDb top 250 list and now I'm watching everything else. All reviews so far.

This time I'm just going to list what I've seen recently in order of descending greatness, and I'll only comment on specific movies when I feel like it. I'm such a rebel.

* * * * * * *

Great
Deadwood, Season 3 (2006) (TV series, 12 episodes): Fuck HBO for prematurely cancelling their best series ever. Fuck them harder for apparently cancelling the promised wrap-up movies as well. As Dan Dority says,

SIX FEET UNDER got the best send off episode in the history of television. SOPRANOS ending was either great or awful (depending on one’s interpretation of it) but at least it got people talking. DEADWOOD—it just stopped. No ending. Just Stopped.

* * * * * * *

Extra very good

Superbad (2007): I laughed, I cried.

Very good
Almost Famous / Untitled (2000) (repeat): Two different versions. The theatrical release is better.
Barton Fink (1991) (repeat)
Der Himmel über Berlin / Wings of Desire (1987) (IMDb list): There's a lot of talk in this one and most of it's in German (and a lot of it is spoken by Adolf Hitler from Der Untergang!) (the rest is spoken by Columbo) and I have no idea what they're all going on about but I do know that it's a seriously beautiful movie.
Fargo (1996) (repeat)
Local Hero (1983): The last one I had left on Aftonbladet's 100-greatest-movies list.
The Party (1968) (repeat): It's funny because it's true. I like to imagine that Bakshi passes out drunk in the bedroom and dreams the last 20 minutes, though.

* * * * * * *

Good plus
The Collector (1965)
Elvis Meets Nixon (1997) (repeat): Extremely amusing TV movie about the legendary meeting in 1970.
Gandhi (1982) (repeat)

Morvern Callar (2002)

Good
2046 (2004)
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988) (repeat)
Avanti! (1972)
Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) (repeat)
The Brothers Grimm (2005)
Educating Rita (1983)
Get Carter (1971)
Idiocracy (2006): Clever satire with an overly optimistic ending. (Spoiler:) There's really no way a decent guy with regular intelligence would have prospered in that world.
The King of Comedy (1983) (repeat)
Kiss Me, Stupid (1964)
Life on Mars, Series 2 (2007) (TV series, 8 episodes): Redeemed by the bittersweet ending.
The Sarah Silverman Program., Season 2 (2007) (TV series, 6 episodes)
Scrubs, Season 1 (2001-2002) (TV series, 24 episodes) (repeat)
Spartan (2004): Shock full of Mamet goodness.
Storytelling (2001)
Sunrise (1927) (formerly IMDb list): The entire movie is available on YouTube, but what you really need to watch is just this minute of Murnau madness.

* * * * * * *

Strong Okay
Death of a President (2006): Fake documentary on Dubya slaying.

Meet the Parents (2000): Some sharply truthful moments.

Okay
Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004): Surprisingly unfunny.
Confetti (2006): Improvised British comedy.
Fuck (2005): Interesting documentary.
Life on Mars, Series 1 (2006) (TV series, 8 episodes): The premise (similar to Back to the Future and Peggy Sue Got Married and characters are more compelling than the actual story. The main character in this travels back (or does he?) to 1973, which seems not that long ago. But you know what? We are now farther away from 1973 than Marty McFly was from 1955. OMG time flies.
Mean Girls (2004): Written by Tina Fey.
Meet the Fockers (2004)
The Mummy (1932)
Spy Kids (2001) (repeat)
Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams (2002)
Tank Girl (1995) (repeat): Directed by Rachel Talalay, who was assistant production manager on A Nightmare on Elm Street, which I'll talk about next time.

Weak Okay
Blades of Glory (2007): Too obvious. Very few jokes are actually funny (I don't think I even smiled for the first half hour or so), but it's amiable enough.
Domino (2005)
Halloween (1978): See all Michael Myers' kills from the Halloween series in chronological order.

* * * * * * *

Bad
None.

Mega-Bad
Day of the Warrior (1996): Quite possibly the worst movie I've ever seen. Thank Christ I wasn't sober. Review here.

* * * * * * *
Now the time has come for Saturday.

The Year of Watching DVDs, Part 32: It Begins on the Streets!

Yeah, it's late afternoon and I'm just sitting in my office, staring at the screen and trying to get some work done because there's some stuff I should have gotten finished by tomorrow but it's just not happening so I guess I should knock off early and get home and watch some DVDs or something.

But then I would feel bad so instead let's take a few minutes to post something INTERESTING on SUPERBLOG!!, and when I'm done maybe I'll be full of creativity and be able to finish my paper or whatever it is I'm working on. (But really, I know what will happen is that enough time will have passed that I'll feel better about going home.) Okay, so here's something interesting which you don't see very often on SUPERBLOG!!: A DVD review!

The DVD I watched is called Coach Carter (2005) and it stars Samuel L Jackson as real-life coach Ken Carter who taught some ghetto kids to play basketball and get better scores on tests so they could go to college. The movie is about his work as a coach. He also owned a store (or even a small chain of stores, maybe? I can't remember) called "Carter's", at least according to the movie (I don't know how factual it is?). But the store isn't very important in the movie. Anyway, I didn't like the movie very much because it wasn't very good.

Also, it was a pirated copy and at times it was heavily pixelated and at a pivotal moment my DVD player even skipped a few minutes ahead so I had to rewind but at that time it was too late because I had already seen that Coach Carter's team didn't win the State Championship and the movie was all ruined for me, but the team members grew as people so it wasn't entirely wasted. Plus, they won a lot of games before that, which was good. Okay, I'll go home now.

The Year of Watching DVDs, Part 31: Some DVDs I Watched This Year

Hi there. I watched the entire IMDb top 250 list and now I'm watching everything else. All reviews so far.

Solaris (2002)
Hollywood remake of the Soviet classic (reviewed in Part 12). Not as good as the original (SHOCKING, I know). Still, it has its moments, and, at 97 minutes (a little more than half the length of the Tarkovsky film), it doesn't overstay its welcome. The story is solid and spooky, and Clooney is a likable actor. (Here's what I'm wondering: Has Steven Soderbergh ever made a really good film?)


Body Double (1984) (repeat)
Body Double, or, as I like to call it Body Boudlbe, because that's what I accidentally typed at first, is a unique movie in that everything about it is disgusting. Gregg Henry, Melanie Griffith, the music (both score and pop soundtrack), the masks, the smiles, the fashion, the hairstyles, the editing. Evertything - right down to such details as the telephones and TV sets. They're all disgusting! Director Brian De Palma is of course thoroughly disgusting himself, but even among his ouevre it's rare to find such a consistently disgusting film. Great stuff!


Romeo and Juliet (1968)
A classic. But in all honesty I bought it because the kids watch it in the last episode of Freaks and Geeks. If you're not familiar with it, IMDb's Plot Keywords will wet your appetite: "Female Nudity / Tragic Love / Bare Butt / Obsessive Love / Balcony".


Citizen Kane (1941) (repeat)
Has anyone heard of this? It's a pretty ingenious film by Orson Welles. I'd recommend it to people.


The Man Who Wasn't There (2001) (repeat)
The Coen brothers' film noir homage, starring Billy Bob Thornton as a hapless barber. I watched the color version, which isn't quite as elegant looking as the one in B/W. Slightly too long.



Rabbits (2002)
David Lynch's bizarre and menacing sitcom pastische. Permeated with a sense of foreboding (much of that may be the score), but it wears thin after a couple of segments. I also watched some other early Lynch, like The Grandmother. It's available on the Internet for free. Google it.

Jekyll (2007) (TV series, 6 episodes)
Had the makings of a great mini-series - James Nesbitt in the lead is excellent (see image at the top of this post) - but on the whole it fails. There are some nice touches, but I think the whole conspiracy angle, which comes to dominate the series, is a mistake. A "straight" update of the original story might have worked better.


Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (1993) (repeat)
Dark animated superhero tale for children. Ultimately inconsequential, but full of pathos. Includes scenes and details from Miller/Mazzucchelli's Batman: Year One, and also from Year Two, and probably some other places.


O Lucky Man! (1973)
Lindsay Anderson's masterwork, I guess (or maybe if...'s better? It was shoddily reviewed in Part 13/14). Full of classic scenes, but goes on longer than it should. Still, almost Great.



The 40 Year Old Virgin (2005) (repeat)
Apatow. Lots of heart. My fave characters are Cal and Dave (Seth Rogen and Paul Rudd, pictured above). I would sacrifice any three of my current friends to have either of those two as a friend. But that's not saying much, because I would probably sacrifice any three of my friends for a club sandwich.



The Birth of a Nation (1915)
AKA The Clansman! The first half is relatively inoffensive, being a fairly straightforward account of various happenings in the South before the Reconstruction (although it's probably worth noting that even at that point, the one guy who believes in equality between the races is portrayed not just as a villain, but possibly insane). Then it gets worse. From the end titles: "Negro action monitored by American Humane Association."

Team America: World Police (2004) (repeat)
Libertarian Jerry Bruckheimer meets Thunderbirds.


Superman: Doomsday (2007)
Direct-to-DVD adaptation of the 1990s Death of/Return of Superman storylines. Pretty fun, but for a Bruce Timm production, it's disappointing. There's plenty of flaws, not the least of which is the presence of Mullet Superman!


La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc / The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)
Silent film by Carl Dreyer about the imprisonment and trial of Jeanne d'Arc. Lots of close-ups. Crappy YouTube version here:



Nixon (1995)
Oliver Stone's unflattering, but probably not entirely inaccurate, portrayal of Tricky Dick. At 3h 3min, it's definitely overlong (and that's not even the director's cut!), but always interesting. Great casting, especially Anthony Hopkins in the title role, and James Woods and Powers Boothe as Haldeman and Haig.


Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages (1916)
In this silent classic, DW Griffith shoe-horns stories from various eras into the title subject. He repeats the word as often as he can on the title cards, and even uses made-up words like "intolerate" and "the Intolerants". You know what would have been fun? If he had used Birth of a Nation as one of his examples of Intolerance. Ambitious, spectacular, boring.

The Office Series 1 (2001) (TV series, 6 episodes)
The Office Series 2 (2002) (TV series, 6 episodes) (repeat)
OMG I love it so much.



Sweet Smell of Success (1957) (repeat)
Burt Lancaster is the coolest columnist in New York, Tony Curtis is his dog. Very fun, rapid-fire dialogue.


C'era una volta il West / Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) (repeat)
Elegant.


The Office Christmas Specials (2 episodes (2003) (repeat)
The concluding specials are less ha-ha funny than the regular series, but more emotionally satisfying than pretty much any TV finale I've ever seen. The scene with Dawn opening her present was enough to make me teary-eyed.


The Usual Suspects (1995) (repeat)
Good performances, especially by Spacey. I've seen it a number of times, but I don't think I was bowled over by the "twist" ending even the first time. It's nicely edited but not very satisfying. Some elements of the plot are just too darn artificial. You have to assume that Keyser Söze is brilliantly calculating, but at the same time stupidly careless.



Dirty Harry (1971)
Some kind of classic, though hard to take seriously. Sometimes very amusing, but it's difficult to say for sure how much of the humor is intentional.


You Kill Me (2007)
Ben Kingsley is alcoholic Polish hitman Frank Falenczyk and SUPERBLOG!! favorite Téa Leoni (Sammy loves her) is his love interest.


Gattaca (1997)
Science phobic scifi action-y drama about man with heart condition who fakes his identity to be an astronaut in Teh Future. The film has its moments, but the emotional climax and much of the denouement is ridiculous. Jude Law's character is faintly interesting.